


The Voyage of the Green Beast

by wei



Category: Naruto
Genre: AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-14
Updated: 2010-03-14
Packaged: 2017-10-08 00:20:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/70770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wei/pseuds/wei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Team Gai's (not so exciting) pirate adventure!</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Voyage of the Green Beast

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the AU meme at naruto_meme. Prompt: Team Gai and their adventures on the high seas! Extra love for Captain Tenten

Captain Tenten looked over the other ships docked around her. Fishing boat, fishing boat, cargo ship, fishing boat. It was a little harbor in a minor town on a minor island, and normally she wouldn't stay in a place like this for longer than it took to restock food, water, and rum. However, Neji insisted on attending his cousin's wedding, and thanks to the favorable winds (which never appeared when she was in a rush), Tenten was stuck here for a week. She supposed her crew deserved a break, since her ship had been running on a skeleton crew for the past month after half of them deserted after getting their share of a particularly lucrative merchant cargo. The scum.

Neji was seated on a barrel next to the gangplank, darning a piece of the sail. Every so often, he glanced over the harbor. Tenten smirked. He only needed to sigh to complete the picture. "Aww, you're so darling sitting there like a girl waiting for her sweetheart," she teased.

Neji ignored her. He was so hard to rile up sometimes.

"Neji!" called out a girl's voice. He put down his darning and walked off the ship toward a small crowd. The girl, Hinata, hugged him, and started pointing at her companions. So sweet. She turned around and looked out to sea before her teeth rotted out.

"Permission to come aboard, Captain!" asked Hinata, with a clumsy mock salute.

"Oh, sure," replied Tenten.

"May my friends come too?" asked Hinata.

Tenten eyed the other four. Two young women gawking at her and her ship and two young men trying and failing to look more nonchalant, and none of them looking like they'd ever been off the island. Perfect. "Of course, Hinata."

Hinata smiled and followed Neji back onboard the ship. "Captain!" said Hinata, who really seemed to get a kick out of her title. "Let me introduce to you my friends, Sakura, Ino, Chouji, and Shikamaru." She pointed to each in turn. "They were so excited when I told them about you and your ship."

Tenten made some polite noises in response and then decided to grab some rum before she was roped into dealing with the interlopers. Unfortunately, when she returned back on deck, Neji was awkwardly standing before a small audience. "It was named by the previous captain, Maito Gai," Neji was explaining.

"But why is the ship named 'The Green Beast.' It isn't green," asked Ino.

"That's a very good question. Why don't you ask the captain?" Neji turned around to face her, once again displaying a distressing ability to see out of the back of his head, and asked, "Ah, Tenten, would you mind…"

She cut him off. "Oh no way. If you want to have girl time with your cousin, get Lee to babysit for you. In fact, I'll go get him for you!" She said the last in a sugary, cheery voice, and left before Neji could rope her back.

Tenten directed Lee to Neji on the deck, and decided that staying (hiding) in her cabin was not cowardace – she just happened to have a lot of paperwork to look through. Even though that was normally Neji's job, she was being considerate so he wouldn't have to worry about that while doing his family things. Really. Unfortunately, an hour later when she wandered down to grab some food, she found out the visitors and Lee (sans Neji and Hinata who were having a tea party or whatever it was they did) had the same idea.

Lee greeted her with his usual enthusiasm. "Captain! These guests have come up with a most youthful idea! They propose joining our stalwart crew."

Tenten looked at him, blinked, and continued staring. "Oh, Captain! Would you like me to repeat what I said?" asked Lee.

"No, I was waiting for that to make sense, except it doesn't. Are you insane? Actually, don't answer that." Tenten turned to face Ino, who seemed to be the leader of the little group. "Are you insane?"

Ino narrowed her eyes. "That's a little rude, don't you think?"

"Have you worked on a ship before?" asked Tenten.

That set off a long spiel on how Ino had tricked her parents into believing she, Shikamaru, and Chouji were visiting a Lady M for three months the previous year when they were really taking a small boat and sailing around the various small islands, so thank-you very much, I know my way around a ship. By the time Ino ended with, "Besides, Lee told us that you need crewmembers, and you're not going to pick up anyone better here. Give us a try and you can always replace us at the next port," Tenten entertained the idea of agreeing just to end the conversation, and then slipping off early right after the wedding. However, she had a little more integrity, and stared at Sakura. "What about you? Any skills worth speaking of?"

"Ah, not really," Sakura started to say.

"Sakura's a doctor," insisted Ino.

"What? No, Ino. I'm really not. I'm just interested in the subject."

"Come on. You sneak all those books whenever you think your parents won't notice, you're always helping out whenever one of the horses gets sick, and remember when you set Chouji's leg? No one could tell that it wasn't Doc F that fixed him up."

"But I never had any training," pleaded Sakura.

Tenten was surprised at herself when she answered. It might have been because of how pitiful Sakura looked, but Tenten was still surprised. "Actually, you're better than what we have right now, which is Lee, and the only reason we designated him as official medic was because of all his experience with getting hurt. We could use someone who can set broken bones and deal with the other things that crop up. I'll think about it." Tenten started shooing them out, cut them off when they tried to talk, and sent Lee off to get Hinata.

When they were finally gone, Tenten sat down with Neji and Lee and started telling Neji what had happened. When Neji didn't join her in mocking the lunacy, she grew suspicious. "Neji, please don't tell me you think this is a good idea."

Neji shrugged.

Tenten stared at him. "Come on. They're normal kids from respectable families. What lunacy would get them to do something so dangerous, not to mention criminal? My ship is not for spoiled little kids to get a bunch of fun adventure stories from. What if Hinata was one of them?"

In that calm, serious voice that drove Tenten insane sometimes, Neji said "I'd whisk her away in a heartbeat if I thought she'd come."

Tenten sighed. The madness was spreading. "You're clearly crazy too. Why?"

"She needs to get away from our family perhaps more than I did," replied Neji.

Tenten was curious. "So why isn't she coming?"

Neji said "She has her own ways of running away," and it seemed that that was that.

Tag-alongs in stow, The Green Beast set off a week later. Tenten couldn't believe she'd been talked into it, or that no one else could see that the perfectly sane looking people around her were anything but. Still, she wasn't regretting her decision as much as she thought she would. Ino actually was a decent shiphand, and Shikamaru and Chouji weren't half-bad as long as Ino was nagging them to pull some weight. Sakura was at least a quick study, picking up the simpler tasks in a couple days. Plus, when Chouji was on kitchen duty, the meals seemed to actually be made up of food, a task she thought was impossible.

The string of good fortune should have made Tenten suspicious. They chased a particularly plump looking merchant ship, showed off their cannon and weapons, and captured it handily without needing to fight. Ino was disappointed.

"That's it?" she asked.

Tenten tried to explain, "Merchants rarely cared about protecting their cargo at the risk of their lives. All we have to do is make it clear that they have more to lose by fighting us than by surrendering"

Ino was still disappointed, but she reconciled herself to it when they opened the crates to reveal several boxes of fine dresses among other loot. "I take it back. This is awesome!"

Division of the bounty quickly turned into a celebration, with food and alcohol freely distributed from the spoils. Her crew had a tendency to get a little silly after a successful haul, and Tenten joined in, for moral support, or course.

"Oh, Captain. You're so strong," gasped Sakura. She fluttered her eyelashes and clasped her hands theatrically. She was dressed in an impractical, ornately decorated dress that would fetch a pretty penny at the next port.

Tenten deepened her voice "Well, ma'am, glad to be of service."

Ino strode up, a bottle in her hand. "I don't know which is more disturbing. The Captain wearing a beard, or Sakura acting like an airhead."

"Acting like you, you mean," retorted Sakura.

"Oh shut up," replied Ino.

The next day, in their post-party haze (except for Lee, who had a ridiculously low tolerance and was never allowed a drop, and was far too cheerful the next morning) no one paid attention to the weather. Not even Shikamaru and Chouji, who spent most of the next day groaning, and staring at clouds.

When the wind picked up and the waves grew choppy enough to make the hung over sailors seasick, they realized something was wrong. Tenten quickly ordered everyone to lower the sails and tie down everything on deck. Lee, the most clearheaded, clambered up to untie the main sail, and when Tenten looked up to see St. Elmo's fire around the top of the masks, she knew that they were either going to be very lucky or very unlucky.

The storm raged for days and days, and in the end, they were tired, hungry, and soaked. Sakura set what bones and sprains she could, and luckily, when inventory was taken at the end, not much was ruined or washed overboard.

Unluckily, the wind disappeared with the storm, leaving them in the middle of nowhere. Neji, the navigator, summarized the problem. "Consulting the star charts, it seems that we're at least a two weeks' row away from the nearest island. The crew would mutiny if we forced them to."

Tenten sighed. "I guess we'll have to hope the wind picks up soon."

The ship drifted the next day. And the next. Tenten floated the idea of rowing to shore to the crew. As they had plenty of food and drink, most of them shot the idea down. She would have pressed, but Neji, who was quartermaster and dealt with most of the day to day duties, was more interested in sparring with Lee. That was the good thing about half her former crew running off after the last haul – the ones that remained weren't there for the loot but the life and love of the sea. That was also the bad thing, since they were sometimes impossible to motivate. Most of her crew worked hard, but their goals didn't often align with hers. When Neji wasn't practicing his swordsmanship, he was taking inventory or updating the ships records. Lee was as always practicing something, whether it be dueling, navigating, or mending split barrels. However, he did take the time to write some truly awful poetry that nevertheless made Sakura shriek in laughter.


End file.
